High-Level Taskforce on Reconciling Energy Security, Climate Change, and Development
The energy environment has changed dramatically for the UK over the past 10 years as low prices for oil and gas have become high; self-sufficiency in oil and especially gas has given way to increasing dependence on international imports; those providing these imports are increasingly willing to use their energy weapon; an excess of electricity generation capacity has been run down and now the emphasis is on replacement; and the rise of China and India has created new international competition for resources. All of this has created fears of a crisis in Britain’s energy security as reflected in Tony Blair’s remarks that ‘Without action to ensure reliable supplies and replace power plants, there will be a dramatic shortfall in our energy capacity and risk to our energy security over the next few decades.’ And that ‘in the future energy security will be almost as important as important as defence to our national security.’
Britain’s policy response has been focused almost entirely on domestic and international actions to deliver energy security. At the same time, however, Britain has ambitious goals for climate security and international development. The connections between these three areas have been almost entirely ignored in public discussions, and the UK government has certainly not found convincing ways of reconciling these competing goals. As a result, there are fears that an aggressively single-minded pursuit of energy security will compromise these other goals.
The Oxford Taskforce was assembled to examine the underlying linkages between the three policy goals of energy security, international development and climate security and to recommend actions to reconcile them. The Taskforce included prominent former members of government and government advisors, leading Oxford academics, the Deputy Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, a former British Ambassador to Russia, the Environmental Policy Advisor to Rio Tinto and former Environmental Advisor to BP, the Associate Editor of the Financial Times, the Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank, and the Director of the United Nations Human Development Report Office.